The
essential difference betweenand drama as genres was first articulated in Plato's Republic and
then fleshed out in Aristotle's Poetics, despite fiction per se not having been invented (the
generic distinction for Plato would have been epic vs. drama). Drama uses imitation by means of
direct mimesis -- actors in stage pretend to be characters -- whereas fiction and epic imitate
their objects by means of a mixture of diegesis ( or narration in the voice of a person talking
about the action) and direct imitation.
In antiquity, both epic and drama
used verse rather than prose. The presence of meter only became central to the concept of genre
with the invention of the ancient novel in the second sophistic. After the invention of extended
fictional prose narrative, literary genres began to be distinguished by rhythmical form as well
as mode of imitation:
Drama: in verse or prose is still defined as a mimetic
genre
Fiction: is prose narrative
Epic: long narrative
poems
Lyric: shorter, often non-narrative poems
No comments:
Post a Comment